iHave Many Names
by twowritehands
Summary: Read it. Live it. Watch through their hearts and eyes as their lives splinter apart and then come together again. Sam makes a place for herself in history and it's all because of him. Freddie always knew she could do it.
1. iReach for the Stars

**AN: the POV was inspired by KeyLimePie14, who writes fics in second-person and inspired me to give it a try! It is FUTURE SEDDIE basically answering the question: what is the last thing you expect to happen to get these two crazy kids together? hope you enjoy it!....forgive typos ;)**

**disclaimer: we do not own iCarly**

**You are Sam Puckett**

Sophomore year you are arrested for the fourth time—this time because you took the wrap for a friend. It was your fault he did it to begin with, you pushed him until his anger blinded his sense of reason. But rather than let him spend the night in jail, face the wrath of his mother, and lose his scholarships, you step up and tell the cops that you did it, he was just there trying to talk you out of it.

Like a nub, he tries to tell the truth, but you crush his big toe and he keeps his mouth shut to keep his girly scream of pain on the inside. You are handcuffed, put in the backseat of the car. As it pulls onto the highway, you look out of the window through stony eyes. You refuse to let your true emotions show at this point. Fear has no place in this situation, and besides, you are concentrating too much on pretending like you had every intention of breaking the law tonight.

You are afraid because this was number four—the last straw, your probation officer had already said so, and your mother agreed, one more arrest and it would be Military School for the rest of your life. Damn, you think to yourself with a shake of the head, there had better be a good reason why you just did this…

Your back muscles twitch as your body nearly twists in the seat so that you can look through the back window at him, but years of practice makes you check yourself and you do not turn around after all. You refuse to look at your reason.

At the police station, you get one phone call. You take the quarter out of the beefy cop's calloused fingers and drop it into the payphone. The number you dial rings three full times before it is answered on the fourth by your J'MaMaw. Her voice is shaky, but happy to hear your voice. You hate to spoil the occasion by bringing up your current situation.

Her disappointment makes tears sting your eyes—another promise to this woman broken. No wonder she tends to favor your sister. She listens to your side of the story (that's the reason you called her) before she angrily tells you that _she_ can do nothing about it, being too old to leave her house. An arrangement for her to contact your mother is made, but you both know that you will be spending the night in a cell. Your mother doesn't answer the phone when J'MaMaw calls. You curse that stupid caller ID phone.

Despite everything, before you hang up, she tells you that she loves you. Your voice cracks as you return the sentiment and then you place the receiver back on the hook. No change falls into the return slot. You take a moment to get your eyes dry and stony once again before you turn back to the cop. With an expression of boredom, he leads you to a cell and locks you in.

The next morning, you are wakened by a persistent phone ringing and the echoing slam of a door that doesn't seem to stay shut for five seconds straight. You sit up and look miserably around the busy police station. Everyone ignores you as they bustle past your cell. You feel like a neglected pet in the circus and begin to miss the old days—Jr. high, when all the cops knew you and wanted to hear your reason for 'visiting' this month. That was before you had found your current friends, and stopped craving whatever odd familiar attention you could find here.

You are pulled from your reverie by a loud shout that disrupts the hustle and bustle of the station. Looking up, you see first, the freakishly tall shape of your best friend's brother as he darts around people to the main desk, asking for you loudly. Then you see in his wake your two best friends, who spot you and come straight to the bars.

As the three of you talk, and you threaten the dork to keep his trap shut and hold onto his scholarships, your friend's brother fails in his attempt to spring you from the pin. Your probation officer has arrived and explains the situation. The looks on your friends' faces are heartbreaking as you tell them that you have to move in order to attend the hellish military school.

He looks so guilty you expect him to turn around and tell the nearest cop that he did everything. He doesn't, because it won't help. You were both at the scene of the crime. All it would do is get him locked up for a few hours; you are still going to military school.

…

The rest of the school year is tough at the Military Academy. Here you can't be lazy, you can't eat snacks in the classroom. You have a uniform, and your hair has to be clean and brushed everyday. You make no friends; all the other students are the worst kind of army brats or the delinquents who love to disrupt things every chance they get and then do push ups all day long. You are too lazy for that. Better that you just keep your head down, do what you are told and finish the year with no problems or court marshals. Maybe then you can talk your mother into letting you come back home.

The work is easier than you expected, and then you wonder why it should have been any harder; here they don't care about brains—it's all brawns, that's what you think, because once you put your mind to the homework, it isn't too challenging. You begin to wonder why you couldn't make yourself buckle down back in public school, take one measly hour out of your day to get the work done, and you begin to understand that you were in some pretty horrendous habits back then. As you find your favorite subjects, and you know what an A+ in those subjects feels like, you feel yourself metamorphosing into that which you have always hated: a dork.

You eventually do make some pals on the side, but no one you would give up free weekends for. That time is still reserved for sleeping in as long as possible and taking a break from everything, and eating the junk food your mother sends you as per your desperate pleas over the phone. You miss your old life, but you are really beginning to like your new one, and when the school year finishes, you aren't too sorry to hear that the deal was military school _forever_.

You have to do military summer school—the worst summer of your life by far, in which you are forced to exercise, rain or shine, until you can do an obstacle course with ease. Then you must pass the tests in those subjects that never did grab your attention, like the History of American Combat, English, and Latin. You are bummed you can't visit your friends, but email keeps you in touch. The next year starts and because you want to be here, it's twice as fun.

…

Junior year you finish at the head of your class. Your grandmother and your sister visit to tell you how proud they are of you. You appreciate it, but you can't help feeling resentful for the fact that your sister has been proven right; straight A's _were_ easy for you, you just had to apply yourself. The positive side of this is that now you share half of her lime-light, if not more. After all, your sister doesn't have such rigorous physical training at her boarding school. You love how strong this place makes you, you're proud of yourself for keeping up, and it isn't the first time you feel glad that you were faced with this challenge in life.

For the summer you get to go back home. It feels strange now, after a year away. It is great seeing your friends again; she has changed her hair; he hasn't changed at all. They both can't get over how different you are as far as obedience and respect to the rules go. You make sure that they understand you are still the girl who left. It takes a day but they come around, and maybe you do soften around the edges and relax.

Your break isn't long enough before you have to return. The new friends you've made here over the year ask about your vacation, you give a brief summary and then listen to theirs, and then it is back to your comfortable routine of exercise and study.

Your senior year, you realize what you want to do for the rest of your life. After graduation, you go into the Air Force. It's the flying; you love to fly. It is the last summer you go home. Your first order of business is your grandmother's funeral. Then you check in on your mom, find her between men and worse off for it. You just want to visit with your friends, so you can feel like you have reached the destination of your trip. Once there, you have a rude awakening.

It isn't home anymore because it is broken. No grandmother, and no iCarly team. This time she hasn't changed and he is different. They aren't close friends anymore. You learn it is because something happened between them months before. After the break up, without her popular web show and what with his new work hours, it was easier to just part ways.

You only see him once at the Groovy Smoothie before he has to jet off to work; now that he buys his own clothes they aren't as dorky as they once were. It stings you just a little to learn that he dated her and not you, but after two years you have began to feel that crush you resented for so long finally wearing off; the sting is for a What If you don't answer.

After your last visit home, you start your new career in the U.S. Air Force. You live on bases and air-craft carriers that travel around the world. Once a year, you meet your oldest best friend in L.A., where she is chasing her dreams of stardom, and your sister in New York, but you are just too busy to meet him. You don't even go to Seattle. Your sister is your go-between with you and your mom; you tell yourself you have no reason to go back there.

Years pass and you continue to grow into a well rounded individual. Hell, the friends you have these days can't believe you even have a criminal record. Old iCarly fans like for you to reminisce about doing the show, but it is all in the past tense and you dismiss all childish behavior; it isn't like the fun things you do now to make people laugh. They all say you should go to L.A. and try to make it big with her in a television sitcom, but you just laugh and say you can't be that funny anymore. You don't really realize that you tend to be the life of parties.

The magic of the web show has a formula in your head and the thought of you and her in L.A. has one variable missing. The last you heard of him he was a professional student, whatever that means. Well, he had better be, you think. It was your sacrifice that got him into the ivy-leagues. Then you smile and thank him because it was his stupidity that got you on this path in life.

Your favorite thing about your life now is that your possibilities are endless. Eight years ago, your best hope was a technical collage degree and a job with heath care benefits. Now when you lay in your bed looking up at the stars through your window, and you imagine flying a space shuttle, all it takes is an application letter. The thrill of the idea, the sheer contrast of who it would make you and who you had always expected yourself to be, sparks a flame of desire.

After a week of careful consideration and research, the thought just won't leave your head. You have to give it a try at least. So you send in the letter. Never in your life have you had such aspirations, it makes you feel wobbly, like you are stretching out of your skin. As the period of wait stretches on and more people hear from your gossiping friends about your new goals, you start to really wish you had just left it alone. You can't fly a space shuttle, what the hell where you thinking?

Then the letter comes and you pass out. No one else is surprised you got in to the NASA program, you're the only one. Your sister makes the first joke, _you_ a brainy astronaut? You smack her on the back of the head, make her swallow her gum. Your old friend's mind is blown. You never did get the guts to tell her that you even sent in the letter. After her shock of hearing your new dream, she is just over the moon for you (no pun intended.)

You had every right to feel wobbly about this. When you enter the program you find that it is twice as hard as you could have imagined—a real challenge. But if you have been anything persistently throughout your life, you have been competitive. No way are you letting something like The Geeks win. Yes, you are joining the club, but _they_ are still geeks, dorks, and nubs; _you_ are just using them as a stepping stone to get what you want: the stars.

After uncountable months and months and months of vigorous training, body and mind, you are ready. You are so excited you could puke and die. They give you a flight: simple, very short. You aren't going to the moon or anything. You are a co-pilot, taking a new team up into the international space station for a few days in the name of science. It's a year away. You spend those twelve months in suspended animation, waiting and waiting. Then the day comes.

You wake up, have some root-beer on cereal (you didn't buy milk this week, it would have gone bad before you got back) and you change your voice mail:

_I have left the planet for a few days. Leave a message and it will be received when I return to planet earth._

You have learned that even NASA has factions like high school. The nerds that do the math, and the nerds who workout, training for actual space flight. You have fallen in with the nerds who workout, the "jocks" if you will, and you don't spend a lot of time getting to know the individuals of mission control. They are names, voices, and authorities who say when you can fly and when you can't. This team you are flying up to the station falls in the grey area between. They are training, but they are doing it for the math and science on the other end. You still haven't met them thanks to conflicting training regimes. As pilots, you and your partner have a million things to check again and again. For passengers, once fit, it's hold on and enjoy the ride.

You walk into flight prep to get ready, practically levitating off the ground thanks to the butterflies in your stomach, and you and the pilot are introduced to your cargo. Just a bunch of anti-social scientists with a boring hypothesis about the effect of zero-gravity on something or other you don't even know--you couldn't get through their mission statement; it isn't vital that you know it. Once up in the space station, your job will be simple maintenance chores as you wait for the experiments to finish so you can take them home. Someone is rattling off their names as you shake their hands, you aren't committing them to memory, you're giving them names in your head: Tall Guy, Four Eyes, and—

You shake his hand in pure shock. His face is mirroring yours maybe ten-fold. He didn't even know you had left the air-force. You are tickled pink with his melting brain. This was exactly why this job appeals to you; anyone who knew you in high school crapping their pants to see where you ended up: _flying the freggin' space shuttle_.

Professional student indeed. So he was a scientist, a geek to the bone, a nub who honestly cared about the effect of zero-gravity on that something or other, whatever it was…well, what more could you have expected from _him_, though really?

"How's it hangin' Benson?" you say, playing it casual. You are smiling at each other and the handshake still hasn't ended yet. He shakes his head. "Sam Puckett. Well, I must admit I always knew I'd see you again."

**AN: most of the chapters will not be **_**quite**_** this long...this one got lengthy, but it had to be set up so the rest would make sense! Also I do not pretend to be a NASA/space program expert, it is what I learned from such fantastic movies as **_**Apollo 13 **_**and **_**Armageddon**_**... lol**


	2. iSee You Again

**You Are Dr. Fred Benson D. Sc.**

It's true, you have always thought you would see her again. Maybe it wasn't a sure-fire belief, no you wouldn't have bet any money on it. It was more like a feeling, one that came from trips down memory lane and then stuck to you like a piece of static-clinging lint. You knew she had joined the air force; you _didn't_ know that she was doing so well in it. The irony also strikes you--how many months have you been thinking of this flight, piloted by two men referred to as "Jack and Sam"?

Flight prep, while already something that would have been the most interesting thing to happen in your life so far, is made twice that by the presence of an old friend. Your reaction to finding her here has intrigued all of her colleagues. They seem to find it hard to believe she was the kind of person you describe from the past. The slacker, the lazy bum, the blonde-headed demon who enjoyed other people's pain—this, to them, is exaggeration of the greatest kind.

Through the curtain dividing you while flight surgeons tape monitors to your skin, you and she play catch-up. Every ear in the room is hanging on your every word—you can feel the intrigue from your colleagues and from hers.

"How have you been?" She asks and you hear her sharp intake of breath as the doctors rub cold alcohol swabs on her skin before applying the tape.

"Good." You answer. You've never felt better.

"How's your mom?" She asks. You smirk. She's over thinking this, being too polite.

"Crazy as ever." You reply. "Yours?"

"Getting by, I guess."

Silence falls between the two of you. Suddenly the only things you can think to say or ask are things just like her too-polite questions. It feels as if the politeness can't go away until you pay her back for the fall she took for you, but that can't be brought up here, with so many ears straining to eavesdrop.

Out of the corner of your eye, you can see her silhouette through the curtain. Same as you, she has her jumpsuit un-done down to the waist, and hanging to her knees so that the doctors have easy access to her chest, back, and rib cage, where they tape the monitors; you can't help but notice her curves, though you try to keep your eyes adverted like the gentlemen you were raised to be.

"So . . ." She says and you hear the smile on her face, "What is it you guys will be doing up there, again? I wasn't really listening."

This makes you laugh out loud. For some reason you are convinced she must have been thinking about pork chops while she was briefed. "I'll be participating in the experiments to determine if sexual interaction is possible in zero gravity and if egg fertilization will be a success."

She yelps in surprise and swallows her gum, starts choking. You and several other people crack up, laughing hysterically. "I'm only joking, Puckett!" You admit through your laughter. "It's tests on bacteria and things you don't care about it."

The curtain glides sideways and she is revealed—her jumpsuit up and zipped, you're sorry to see. She is glaring at you in that familiar way that makes your skin prickle with fear. You never realized how much you missed that until now. The others in the room as still laughing at her. You meet her eye and hold the gaze confidently. You're not scared of her any more; the training for this flight has bulked you up. You could take her . . . You could probably take her . . . You swallow and _hope_ you could take her.

You had thought she would break first, but you find that you had let time allow you to underestimate her; you end up breaking eye contact first. The doctor is finished with you now, he allows you to put your arms back into your jumpsuit sleeves and zip it up. When you look back at her, she is smiling at you.

"So how did you go from a techno dork to caring about germs?" She asks. You chuckle and explain that you have already gotten your doctorate in technology and have since decided to move on to other things, more specifically, the study of life science. The complexities of living organisms astound you; you perceive life as the ultimate machine and are eager to understand it.

"I'm going on this mission," you explain, "in order to conduct some experiments that I plan to write about in my Doctorate in Biology dissertation." She listens to your passionate babbling about this stuff and shakes her head, but you see that you have impressed her. You like that you have.

…

It is a chilly morning at the Cape. The shuttle sits upright and colossal on the launch pad. You can hardly believe you will be strapped to the front of this rocket and shot off the face of the planet; it feels so Coyote and Road Runner that you can't help but smile as you and the rest of the crew walk as a group toward the lift that will take you up to the head of the shuttle.

You look to your left, at the Coyote to your Road Runner, and see that she is giddy with excitement. She's glowing and biting her bottom lip. You can't recall if she ever did that when you were kids, but you like it. She looks at you, out of the corner of her eye at first, then with all of her attention. She narrows her eyes, but playfully, with no hint of real loathing, "Make sure you don't wet those anti bacterial underpants of yours, Fredward, I don't want your piss all over the upholstery of my new ride."

You laugh, letting the old anti-bacterial underpants jibe go. She can't be blamed for having only the old, childish things to tease you about; you haven't seen each other in . . . too long. Then a high-pitched shout draws your attention to the watching crowd. You see your mom waving madly at you, half-hysterical with pride and anxiety. You give her a wave and a big smile as she snaps a hundred and one photos. You're thankful she can't get too close because of flight health safety.

You and the rest of the crew step into the lift. It's a small cage, frightfully small with eight people in it. You suddenly realize, as it gives a jolt and begins to rise, that you would have really liked a hug from your mom after all. Your heart starts pounding and you begin wondering if it's too late to back out.

Something nudges you gently in the side. You look over to see a bottom lip being held between perfect white teeth, and blue eyes locked on yours. "No going back, Benson. The stars are ours." She says. There is a beautiful glint in her eyes—something wild and bigger than her skin. You realize that this thing you're seeing, this flash of life in her, was what you used to call the demon; all it needed was a path and plan, and absolutely no boundaries.

Some one else gives his two cents about the mission, and a few others agree, admitting nerves and excitement. The senior polite jibes his partner about being a rookie. In turn, she rips him a good one—but holds off on the particular brand of viciousness that you realize she must reserve only for you.

The lift comes to a gentle stop and the door rattles open. The ground is some hundred feet down. You swear you can hear your mother's praises, prayers, and cries on the wind. You straighten your backbone and let the others file out first. A warm hand rests on your shoulder and you realize you zoned out while watching them go, the two of you are the last ones left in the cage. She leans in, "You'll look like an ass if you back out now." She was always logical like this. "Go ahead and cry if you want. I'll kick anyone's ass who thinks it's funny."

"I don't want to cry!" You scoff as you begin the trek across the bridge that brings you to the shuttle door. You walk right up to it and crawl in as if you do this every Thursday. You hear her laugh as she follows you.

It's a long process strapping in, and even longer process booting up the computers and doing a systems check. She is amazing up there in the second seat. It is surreal. You tell yourself that just because you don't fully understand the things she is checking off, doesn't mean she's _smarter_ than you. You learned years ago that in the world of specializations there are no Smart and Smarter awards….if there were, you reassure yourself, then you would still be smarter; you hold three college degrees already, after all.

You can't help these thoughts going through your head, you have been competitive academically since you were first aware of grades, worsened in your teenage years when you showed no aptitude for sports. She, on the other hand…

You blink, because it took this moment of space-flight prep for you to realize that you and her—you aren't different at all.

You recognize the same edge of competitiveness in your estranged friend as you have cherished in yourself your entire life. It had always been there—it was the field of applications that made you and she so different. She needed to be the toughest; you were the nerd on which she practiced the punches.

Smiling now because your entire friendship is a different color in your memory, you make whispered comments and silent exchanges with your crew members to convey your mounting excitement. When finally things are ready to go, you close your fists tight, resolved not to close your eyes, and try to calm your nerves.

"Ten . . . Nine . . . eight . . .seven . . . six . . ." You feel like you can pass out. Then you remember to breathe. The shuttle suddenly roars to life under you as ignitions come to life. The rumbling is unbelievable. "Five . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . ._lift off_."

You close your eyes. You are pressed back into your seat as you and several thousand tons of steel, fuel, and computer parts climb higher and higher into the sky.

Her scream makes you open your eyes again. She is in the pilot seat; her scream was of sheer triumph and joy. You're glad you can't really see anything but a static blue in the surprisingly small windshield; you don't think your heart would be able to handle the sight of the world actually falling away. Some where in the back of your mind, you think _at least she's with you_.

That last thought crossing your mind before you are literally _off_ the planet is something that you don't know what to do with. Was it filling you with a sense of dread or was that something else? Whatever it is crashes down around you as gravity slips away and your arms rise without your consent. You don't even notice. That thought is still zipping through your mind and it doesn't matter what your initial feeling about it was, because one feeling is beginning to overpower everything else; it is a feeling of impending doom because you are realizing you will be stuck in the space station with Sam Puckett for seven days.

Docking with the space station is unnerving and when all the clicking and suction starts, your heart hammers. Of course, you know that it is standard, but it sounds like things are banging around. You are relieved when it's over and a new excitement fills you: you'll get to unbuckle and float around in the space station!

First you have to meet a handful of other people from Russia and Japan, go on a tour of the station, and unload your supplies from the shuttle before you can play.

Zero-gravity is the most fun thing in the universe. This is your conclusion after only twenty-five minutes as you bop around the lab watching her antics. With the lab's camera in your hand and her tap dancing on the ceiling, you feel like this is just another bit for the web show—as if she had had a zero-gravity button on her remote, and your third party was just downstairs getting soda.

Your crew members are laughing hysterically, and they beg you to tell another story about her old pranks. It is the first time since they were regularly occurring nightmares in your life that you can speak of them without shame. It's the arguments each story sparks between you and her that make this so; she refuses to be painted off as the bad guy, you will tell only how it really was, and it is mostly this banter that makes the others laugh. You never knew you missed the debates until know.

The first day of floating is devoted entirely to the rookies playing with stuff. You untie everything so that it is floating around, promising the senior pilot as if he was your father that you will clean the mess up when you are done playing.

With everything from your space helmet to the school supplies brought for your research floating around you like a dream, you laugh and joke with her and your friends. She looks like she has been electrocuted. With her multitude of wavy hair tied up in a knot on the back of her head, the small hairs that have escaped from the rubber-band stand straight up. You point this out with a snort and she tries a couple of times to make the hair obey with no avail. Then she gives up and takes it all down.

The effect now is that all her hair is loose and drifting around her head like the mane of a mermaid. You tell her to smile at the lens of the camera as you pan around to get her in a shot with the sun burning naked in the viewport window. The effect of the light on her hair turns it from a mane into a golden halo and her smile makes you breathe differently.

One of your friends interrupts with an observation about the very sun you have forgotten in your comparison between it and her. You are pulled out of that train of thought—barely aware even of its existence—to reply, and before you can return to the moment, whatever it was, the senior pilot has zipped over and is now showing her a neat trick.

As you watch her snort and giggle while she tries to drink the water blobs her partner squirts out of the bottle, you finally register that sub-train of thought and quickly derail it. The sense of doom comes crashing back, now with a face. You were sort of expecting something like this, because you know what happens to people trapped in close space for long periods of time. But you aren't ready for it to happen in your life right now, and you weren't calculating the other variables in the situation.

The senior pilot guffaws like an idiot and helps her win control of her hair so that she can dry her mouth and face. You roll your eyes and determinedly turn the camera on your other friends, who you know you can trust. Not that you have any matter in which you need wing-men. You just don't like Mr. Rocket Ship over there, who laughs like a horse. Both your trustworthy friends are coincidentally married, but you decide to ignore that reasoning in your regard for them.

Soon, playtime is over and you have to get down to business. For several hours your mind is actually completely focused on your tasks and through sheer determination, you think of the fairer pilot as nothing but a fellow collogue; you are thankful that she is behaving so professionally, otherwise it would have been hard to do so.

**A/N: as in all of the twowritehands stories, this fan fiction was written by two people. This chapter is when the second sister (that's me: Hill) began joining in on the fun! I just want to say that this fan fiction had a life of it's own and all we could do was try to keep up with it! It just SPIRALED OUT OF CONTROL! that's why there are, like, fifteen chapters . . . any way, hope you read it all and enjoy :)**


	3. iLike the Way You Work

**You Are Lieutenant Sam Puckett**

You have completed the chores necessary for the day. You have nothing else to do but play around in between shifts of keeping the station in working order as the nerds go about their business. Half of what they say is over your head. They speak almost an entirely separate language (at first you thought it might be Russian, but they insist it is English) and play with extremely complicated, spindly little tools. You have enough professional etiquette to bite back any jibes about how pointless what they are doing seems to be—after all, who cares? After biting back enough of them, they stop coming to mind, and suddenly you find yourself admiring them for their brains.

For some reason you can't think that they are being serious when they call him "Dr. Benson," and you actually laugh out loud when someone, very seriously, calls him simply "Fred." Curious how one little "ee" sound can change a name from something that evokes child hood memories into something that makes you look twice and notice scruff on his cheeks and a muscle jumping in his jaw as he concentrates on ever-so-carefully putting a Petri dish of something under the microscope.

Bedtime consists of calling dibs on a strip of Velcro on the walls and sticking oneself to it in order to avoid bumping into vital switches and knobs in the night. You and the senior pilot sleep in half hour shifts; some one has to be awake at night in order to do the routine thrusts and things and keep alert for anything that might happen, such as a meteor shower.

You find yourself trying to go to sleep as the last body at the end of a row of geeks lined up like sardines. The lights have been dimmed for your comfort. You can hear the murmurs of your partner talking to mission control. In other pasts of the space station, scientists from around the world are resting for the night. Your eyes are drooping while you watch as one lone scientist remains awake and at work—refusing to give up an experiment that the others have deemed "impossible to replicate."

The next night, during your shift, you stay unnaturally silent so that the busy scientist can work. Idle comments keep coming to mind; a few times you nearly say them. This happens enough times for him to notice, and when you turn a word into a throat-clear, he sighs.

"What's on your mind?" he asks as he pulls something sticky off a microscope slide using a pair of tweezers. You just shake your head, "Nothing, I didn't mean to bother you."

"Oh, I was sighing in boredom, please, talk to me." He says as he works. You see him blink sleepiness out of his vision and shake his head to concentrate. You propel yourself to his side of the room so that the two of you can talk in low voices and not disrupt your crew members' sleep.

"So go to sleep, I hear this is impossible anyway." You say.

He rests an elbow on the table and rubs hard at a muscle in his neck. "I can't. It's sort of a weird OCD thing, you won't get it."

You don't know if you should take the OCD thing seriously. "Try me." You say. He opens his mouth and you intelligently ask him to "Keep the science stuff in laymen's terms, could you?"

He smiles. "I know this is possible, I've seen it once. I need to see it again. I can't sleep until I do."

"Makes sense to me," you say with a shrug, glancing over the gauges and readings again for lack of anything else to do.

He rubs at that muscle again. You have uncrossed your arms and swam to him before thinking and now you are silently requesting to take over for him. He lets you, pushes stuff around his desk pointlessly for a few seconds before getting back to work. The skin on his neck is warm and you keep remembering the way he blushed when you were kids, the color starting at his neck before crawling to his face.

You bite your lip to keep any condescending remarks to yourself as you continue to massage his shoulders. When he says nothing about the relief your work is giving him, you ask, "Better?"

He laughs boyishly. "Yeah, er--lots."

He doesn't tell you your work is done so you don't stop. You like having something to do—night watch is the most bored you've been ever since leaving earth—and it keeps your mind from searching for conversation that would disrupt his research.

He breaks the silence, putting the rubber eraser end of his pencil to his temple and letting it float there. "There's something I've been meaning to do say to you for a long time now…"

Intrigued, you slow the massage. "Yeah?"

"Back when you took the heat for me, that was really a very loyal and selfless thing you did for a friend. Thank you."

Embarrassed, but pleased to receive the thanks left wanting for nearly ten years, you smile and pat his shoulder. "You're welcome… but I don't think it was all that selfless, I mean you didn't do it alone, I was busted for my part, all I did was take on the slack of your end."

"Still, it means a lot." He said. "About who you really are, you know?" he looks straight up to see your face. You look down so he can't look up your nose, and now your faces are maybe two inches apart. Suddenly you are aware of the fact that just because your are standing here, doesn't make it the floor. The Velcro on all four walls makes it possible to choose one's floor and suddenly you feel as if you are actually standing on the ceiling, or maybe a wall. The vast blackness of the space outside, quiet easily something that can press in on you, is suddenly wide open and spinning, but you and him, you aren't moving; you're anchored somehow.

Suddenly, an alarm clock jumps and starts ringing its bell shrilly. Both of you jump apart, as if caught with your hand in the cookie jar.


	4. iLost

**You are Colonel Jack Shaw**

You don't like him at first. He is too pale and weak, all the things your father never allowed you to be. He seems far too reluctant to believe that she is a brilliant and kind person at heart, though that _is_ hard to see if you don't know to look for it. You saw it because it had to be there, anyone who wants to launch just to see the stars isn't as mean as she pretends to be. They claim to be old friends, yet he doesn't see who she really is.

You would down right hate him if she didn't like him so much.

At first, you aren't worried at all. He is the kind of nerd she likes to rip on with you as you train together, but as each hour passes on the mission, you are learning. He isn't as weak as you first thought--in fact he has incredible backbone to say the things he does to get a rise out of her.

The stories they tell explain everything to you in pieces. He wasn't just someone she went to high school with, but used to be her best friend, and you are pretty sure a girl separated them. You had been attracted to her for quiet some time, planned to wait until after this mission, see if her eyes still glittered when she talked about space travel; if they did then you were going to ask her out to dinner. Then _he_ turned up.

You notice right off that she likes to call him "Freddie," and he needs only ask half a sentence about her mother and an entire thing passes between them in silence. After that, you stop planning on that dinner.

He stays up all night on your first night shift, working all alone. You think you see her watching from her Velcro strip in the back, but your glance shows her stuck there with her eyes closed. You hope it was a trick of the lights that made her eyelashes seem to flutter closed just in time.

He stays up all the next night working again. She will be taking the first watch. You fall asleep before any conversation starts between them. The alarm clock wakes you hours later. You drag your eyes open in time to see your co-pilot quickly move her face from his. You shut the ringing clock up as she laughs lightly in embarrassment and he looks lost.

She does an excellent job of pretending nothing had happened. It takes him a second but you see that he is just as good at fooling himself. By accident, you catch his eye and he clears his throat. You smile and wink. Way to go, you're thinking to him. Lucky bastard.

**AN: I know, who cares about other characters? I sat down to write and this just came out...luckily it was short. lol**


	5. iAm Spiderman

**You are Dr. Fred Benson, D. Sc.**

It was a moment, you're mature enough to acknowledge that. You try not to paint images of what would have happened if that alarm hadn't went off, but you like to hold onto the feeling of her cool fingers on your skin and her face so close to yours--your imagination is too fertile to leave it at that. Plus, the colonel's wink opened a flood gate. You feel you've won a battle—one that hadn't really happened--that's just how you feel. By the end of the day, you have a short scenario that so closely resembles MJ kissing Spiderman upside down that you want to see the movie again.

With such a thing playing through your thoughts, you find it awkward to look at her. Not that you are bad with women, but they aren't your forte. You have your single mom to blame for that; she raised you like it was the fifties, everything she taught you in this matter is outdated. An older friend gave you some great tips over the years and, yeah, you learned a great deal on your own, but never will you be smooth and confident—especially when you are really attracted someone.

After an argument with your fellow team members, you are forced to take a break and get some sleep. "Fine, but wake me in an hour." You say grumpily and go to the sleep area. There, you find that she has donned a night mask to block out the lights, and has stretched herself horizontally across all the Velcro strips. You pause, wonder first why she decided to do that, then if you shouldn't just stretch out below her. But you can't, at least not comfortably, she is laying spread eagle; even in her sleep taking as much space in the room as possible, like always.

That was why the thought of her in space was so hard to conceive; but now you see that it is actually easy for someone to be bigger than the world up here--another amazing feat she accomplished without a second thought. You look at her peaceful face for a second and then pull yourself out of it.

Oh man, are you in trouble.

You hesitantly grab her ankles and gently pry them from the wall. You don't realize that you seem to be holding her legs like they are sticky and you wish to keep your hands and clothes clean. She wakes as you move her and peeks from under the mask. Finding that you are the culprit, she smiles and curls into the fetal position so that you can now have your pick of all other Velcro strips. After a beat, you take the very last one and close your eyes. You should have expected her to put her feet right back where you found them like she does.

Playfully tucking them under your arms as if they are a heavy quilt, you find you like the security it gives you, almost as if you were in a real bed again. You snuggle deeper into the scratchy wall and pat her calves. "Sleep tight."


	6. iSee Hurricane Sam

**You Are Lieutenant Sam Puckett**

You like him. You come to that conclusion unwillingly as you sleep. The little voice in your head states it as a perfect fact without your consent and you know it's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Along with admission of this comes resentment. You liked him before, and looked how _that_ turned out.

You know somewhere deep inside of you, in the same place your desire to travel among the stars comes from, that you're really just scared, scared of letting yourself become as vulnerable as you feel when you think about how you wish he would touch you more often. You are not your mother, you tell yourself, firmly. You do not need a man to hold you together.

The rest of the time in the lab passes in the same routine that had developed. The only difference is that you let yourself say a mean thing to him here and there. Maybe once in a fit of immaturity, you squirt tang all over the back of his shirt. Another time, you seriously consider licking his food before giving it to him, but in the end just decide to hurl it at him. He laughs every time you do these things. That infuriates you. Does he think you're _flirting_?

Think again, Benson.

The last day in space arrives along with a fantastic hurricane over the Bahamas. You and the crew get a kick out of watching it for a few moments. Your partner listens to something from mission control and smirks, then calls over his shoulder, "Get this, fellas, they're calling that one Hurricane Sam."

Beside you, with his face so close to the window that his breath is forming fog on the glassas he looks down at the storm, a small smile lifts one side of his mouth. "I never realized how beautiful a storm could be."

You don't miss the way one of the nerdier nerds raises his eye-brows at the other. Your teeth clench, your nostrils flare and you lose interest in the swirling vortex of clouds so far below. That night, your night watch shifts are not spent alone. Once again, a lone scientist is hard at work long after his friends have fallen asleep.

You are strapped to an exercise machine, everyone is required a few hours on it. You have reached your requirement a while ago, but you don't want to float around in close proximity to—Petri dishes of bacteria. Suddenly, a shout startles you.

"Matt!"

You look back in time to see one of the scientist snort awake. "What?"

"I DID IT!"

After that, the celebrations wake the entire crew and all chances of sleep are gone. What are they going to do? Well, they are going to do it _again_ of course! Scientists. They get on your nerves.

When the time comes to leave the lab and re-enter the earth's atmosphere, you are glad; the station has been feeling too crowded, and if you have to look at broad shoulders as he dips his head way down like he does when looking through microscopes again, you think you'll scream.

Landing is scary, but in that good, thrilling way that just makes your heart pound and your hands shake and you want to do it again. The feel of gravity makes you sick, disoriented. Teams meet you on the landing strip and take you all to the recovery station. This is your least favorite part, you decide. Most of it is how weak space has made you feel. A small part of it is that your time with him is drawing to a close.

As tradition, the crew goes for drinks to celebrate. It is a long night, full of conversations about what's next. The scientists can't seem to talk fast enough about what they can do with the few ounces of knowledge they collected. As for you, you already can't wait for your next flight.

He says goodbye to you outside the bar. He is steadier on his feet than you are, because at one point you decided that you weren't going to set a limit on your intake tonight. That was about the time a sexy brunette began hanging all over him, but that is neither here nor there.

His smile is lopsided and there is a cowlick in his ruffled brown hair. You fight the urge to smooth it down as he says, "This whole flight has been the most fun I've had since high school. We should keep in touch."

You bob your head. "Sure." Why are you smiling so big like a freggin idiot?

He chuckles at something and dips his head to land a quick little kiss on your cheek. "See you around, Sam." He says and, after one last smile, he slips away. Suddenly his words begin sounding more like a casual permanent goodbye than a real promise.

Maybe it's because you're feet are on the ground again, but it feels like all the possibility that bloomed to life between the two of you is fading away. The two of you may have shared the stars for a few days, but that doesn't mean that you don't have two very different lives to live on Earth; lives that neither of you can throw away on a maybe.


	7. iKnow Movie Stars

**You Are Lieutenant Sam Puckett**

Six months after your first flight, you have stopped expecting the nub to call you, have stopped seeing his face floating, weightless so close in front of yours every time you close your eyes for the night. In fact, you and Jack, the man who sat right beside you as you blasted out of the atmosphere, have begun going on regular dates, though nothing has been official.

One day you get a call from your oldest and dearest friend. She has exciting news. She is staring in a movie and is inviting you to the premier in New York. You talk on the phone with her for hours, recalling the good old days when entertainment was the center of your lives.

At first you try to avoid the topic—after all, you haven't spoken to her about him since she told you about their failed relationship, but there is no getting around it; Those days in space are the biggest thing that have ever happened to you, and he was there through it all. It would be a lie to leave it out as the two of you play catch up.

She is just as surprised as you expected; after all, who wouldn't be surprised upon hearing that your best friend was in outer space for 5 days, sharing oxygen with the first love of your life?

You wish you were talking face to face, so that you could tell if that is really hurt in her voice or just your imagination.

"How is he?" She finally asks. Either she is truly over him, or has truly mastered her craft, she sounds completely nonchalant. But, then again, their break up was seven years ago, now... Wow, how times flies.

"He's a bigger geek than ever." You answer. "But it was good seeing him again."

"I'm glad you had someone familiar to share it with." She says and right then you know what she's thinking. You make an abrupt subject change and the conversation heads towards her brother and what he has been up to with his kids before it somehow ends up back on the subject of her movie. In turn for being invited to her premier, you promise to invite her to your next launch.

Your days are filled with earth-bound flying for the air-force. Your ambitions are beginning to take the shape of the moon. NASA has been planning to return to the lunar surface after 40 years. You and Jack often spend hours gazing up at the moon, thinking out loud about what it would be like.

You work harder than ever and keep your fingers crossed.

It is nearly a year later—in fact, you are due to head to New York for that premier any day now, when you are finally assigned to a new flight. You can hardly believe it when they say what the mission is.

You will be the first woman to walk on the moon.

If you had his number, you would have called him directly after calling your sister and your movie star. You spend every waking moment training, the only break you take is to go to New York. It takes a lot of arguing before Mission Control clears you to go, but finally they cave. You pack a carry-on and board the plane.

She is waiting for you at the terminal, looking as gorgeous and Not Real as she does in the previews for her movie. The two of you squeeze each other tight and laugh for twenty minutes straight for no other reason than you are just that thrilled to be together again. She leads you to her car, talking fast, going on and on about how excited she is for you. "Who cares about my movie!" She cries, giving you another hug. "It's a b movie anyway, YOUR GOING TO BE IN HISTORY BOOKS!"

Like it does every time you hear those words, your heart stops, your breath catches, your mind whirls. When in the hell did _Sam Puckett_ become this special? You are so happy, you feel like you can explode—and then you reach her car.

First, all you see is a white-clad elbow resting in the window on the passenger side, then the shirt twists, the body turns around and a cowlick sticks out of the open window to look at the two of you approaching. He smiles one big, lopsided smile and the door springs open.

"The first woman on the Moon!" He shouts it so loudly that it echoes in the parking garage and several people stop to look in curiosity. The mission hasn't gone public yet, so no one knows what the hell he is talking about.

He actually runs and scoops you up, twirls you around. "I'm so proud of you!"

He sets you back down before your brain has time to register anything. You feel dizzy as your twin gets out of the car also, followed by her fiancé and your best friend's tall brother, who is growing a beard now. You give them all tight hugs, and humbly accept their praises. You find out that he has been spending all of his days in an underground laboratory somewhere working with some of the best minds in the country on something—he doesn't even bother to try to explain it. No one really asks him to.

For the night of the premier, you have to squeeze into an elegant pale yellow dress that she loans you and then you have to sit for nearly two hours as her people do your make-up and your hair. This glamour is her life. You can't help but recognize the similarities in your lives and are quick to point them out to her. You both spend months on a single project, you both have to be extremely patient during the prep for it, and you both do things that will forever be immortalized, be it science or cinematic history.

Her brother's beard clashes with the elegance of his tuxedo, but he refuses to shave. Apparently both his wife and his daughter love "daddy's whiskers." Your heart swells at the thought of such a happy little family unit. It occurs to you—not for the first time--that you are nearly thirty and your biological clock is running out. However, you shove that thought away like usual.

Your sister and her future husband look absolutely fabulous in each other's arms . . and you lose your breath when you see him in his tux. He looks you up and down and jumps his eye brows. "You clean up nice." He says. You return the compliment and then all of you climb into a limo.

The movie is a comedy, of course, and it is a hit. At the after party, you can't allow yourself even a single glass of Champaign. NASA only cleared you for two days. You will be returning in the morning and hangovers would only make the flight back to Texas a nightmare. You meet several famous movie stars and laugh more than you have in your whole life. You make a mental note to set aside time to visit these friends more than just once a year.

This time, when he says goodbye in the airport, he hugs you tight and promises to be there for your moon launch. Part of you hates that he whispers the promise in your ear, another part threatens to go weak in the knees. You are thankful that he hugged you first, so that the round of hugs that follow relieve the tension he left in you. Your zany bearded friend is last and he spins you around. "I'm naming my next daughter after you!" he shouts "AND I'm making you godmother! That way I can tell the world I know you like I know my own sister!"

Right before you board the plane, you look over your shoulder to see that the others have already turned to head back for their car, but the nub is still standing there, leaning on the corner and watching you. He smiles when he sees you look back, raises one hand high in the air and waves. You catch the wave and vaguely plan to carry it with you to the moon.

**A/N: is that last line too cheesy? sorry, I couldn't help it.**


	8. iMoon Walk

**You are the First Woman on the Moon**

_Where is he?_

You don't know the answer to that. He has not come to the launch. He said he would, and he hasn't shown up. At least, you haven't him in the crowd. You look, you can't help yourself, but his face is not to be seen. Not a word of warning or apology. He just isn't here.

Your other friends are, even your mom, who is beaming and preening with pride as if you have already walked on the moon, like nothing bad could happen between now and then. You wave, but the perfect rhythm of your morning is ruined—even your footing on that solid, clean, level pavement of the launch-pad feels off.

You feel jinxed. His absence is daunting. You feel like something bad is going to happen.

Nothing goes wrong on the way up, smooth as silk. It makes you are angry. Your can't enjoy your favorite thing in the universe—flying in space—because something still feels wrong and it is all his fault.

…

The pure oxygen is rich in your throat as you breath it in, and your breath remains close in the confines of your helmet. Your are trying to move slowly to savor every single second of this, but it is too big for you to take in all at once. The best you can do is think of it in small increments. Your heart is pounding, your are shaking, and your mouth is dry. Why does your mouth have to be so dry now? When the next words out of it are going down in history?

Jack is at the top of the ladder, watching you and cheering you on. You can't see him for the glare off the face of his helmet, but you hear his voice is in your earpiece as he says, "Nice and easy... Houston, she's at the bottom of the ladder."

This is it. You take a deep breath and bounce away from the ladder. Your stomach flips, wobbles as you don't drop but glide sort of diagonally down, not falling by any great force; it is more like you just decide to go down and down you go.

You are flying without a plane or a shuttle.

_Is he watching this_?

The first thought in your mind puffs up just like the powder rising from your first foot fall, and it has nothing to do with the ceremonial line you have prepared. The danger of it is, you almost say it aloud—you don't, but you almost did.

So your first words on the moon sound angry when they were supposed to sound happy and exhilarated. Here you are standing on the face of the moon, looking at the earth as small as a silver dollar, leaving your immortal footsteps in the dust, flying like in your dreams--and all you want to do is get home before there is a malfunction.

"You're rattled, is something wrong?" Jack asks. You snap at him, humble him so that he doesn't bother you again with stupid questions. No you aren't rattled. You are having the best time in your life. _Nothing_ can top this.

Nothing, you repeat to yourself, and you growl out loud in anger when your brain summons the memory of his arms around you and his breath in your hair--as if to ask like a timid child, even this?

You shred the memory, break it down to unrecognizable pieces so that who-hugged-who, colors, smells, and promises are no more distinguishable or significant to you as the hugs and farewells at your Military School graduation ceremony. Without your partner noising into your business, with a list of important tasks at hand, and with the entire experience finally soaking into your bones, it isn't long before you can let go of a little thing like someone forgetting to come to your launch.

You don't feel empty. You might have been sensing a hollow space inside of you in the last months, but you can't feel it now. Riding shotgun over the uneven lunar surface in the Desert RAT, you feel full to the bursting point as you look through the windshield at the stars, and the mountains and the craters, and the lunar sunrise. Your skin is tingling and you feel complete.

…

Your sister and mother meet you when you return to earth. They give you big tight hugs, and can't believe how famous you are, and your mom invites you and your sister to the house for the weekend. You can't go, you say, you have stuff to do. You lie and fudge truths about your month's schedule until she drops it. You could have moved things around, made the time, but the idea of your recovery period vacation does not involve days stuck with your mother—more like a hammock in your shady backyard in Houston.

In said hammock, your eyes closed behind your sunglasses, your glass of root beer sweating heavily on the table a swing away, you listen to the message on your machine for the third, and final, time. He sounds hurried, he keeps his reason vague, he promises to call when you get back. So he didn't forget, his life just didn't allow it; you can respect that. You delete the message and drop the phone into the warm grass below you, with a yawn. In minutes you drop off to sleep, and dream of the usual things; flying…the moon…ham...

The next weeks are full of interviews with several magazines and talk shows. You appear on Opera and talk about how you became an astronaut, playing up the troubled-child-who-got-her-life-together-and-now-look-where-she-is thing. They even surprise you with a clip from the old web show, and you discuss your friendship with the popular new actress.

At work, you have began to help train newer astronauts joining the core, and you and Jack go on a few more dates, still officially just friends. You know he would like to become more than that, and you think you may just let it happen. After all, it doesn't look like any more tech docs need a ride to the space station, and you never do get that phone call. You get another message, commenting on your appearance on Opera and being sorry he didn't catch you when he called, but he had to go test something within the next minute or the experiment would be compromised.

He can't come to the 4th of July BBQ you throw in your backyard, he has a conference. Funny how the scientific circles can be so broad and narrow at the same time. Just because his is focused on life on planet earth, your circles move apart from his.

....

It is dawn and you are awake.

By the grey light tinting the un-curtained window in your house, you make your way barefooted down the dark hallway, around the coffee table and Lazy Boy in the living room, to the kitchen. You don't need the shadowy light of the new day to see where you are going, you know where everything is, that the countertops in this room are covered with the groceries you are too lazy to store properly in your cabinets, and that the sink is full of dirty dishes.

You step over the cold floor vent, and the loose board creaks loudly under your weight as you jerk open the freezer door. A frigid cloud of cold wafts across your face and lifts the hairs away from your face. No light bulb. You don't need one to find the five pound bag of mini Hershey's bars you have stored there. You root a few out for a little pre-morning snack.

You peel away the wrapper and snap a corner off with your back molars. Oh frozen chocolate, is there anything better than the fresh, crisp taste as it melts on your tongue like a piece of heaven?

The sink dripping. An early bird calling. That pesky stray cat snooping around on your deck railing. You stand in silence and watch the world outside your kitchen window come to life as you enjoy your candy.

This is all too familiar to you. You have been battling insomnia and have gotten to know the young hours of each morning far better than you would like. The buzz of your moon walk has finally died down, your next flight is years off, and now you spend most days training new air-force recruits just like when you weren't in NASA. You feel stuck.

You won't take pills to sleep, not even over-the-counter stuff. You used to watch your mother pop them when things were bad, crawl into bed and avoid her problems rather than fixing them, and you promised yourself you would always face whatever curve-balls life threw at you.

Look where's it gotten you: a home; a fantastic job; friends; peace; happiness. It wasn't easy. Damn it was hard, sometimes, to take the steps along this road, but so far you have not regretted a single one.

Until now.

The insomnia is your warning. It's that push, egging you to take another step. One you need to take, but you're hesitating. A voice in your head wants to know what's wrong with what you've got going, it's working! It's right! Don't look back, it says.

Well, you've _been_ listening to this voice and now you can't sleep. Time to try something else. You know how to fix this. You know exactly how to do it; you have to go back…to the place you once called home. She would like to see you again; you would like to see her. She deserves a visit from you; you owe her that much at least—for always getting out of that bed for you.

Already you feel better. The step is half taken. You will go this weekend, you had nothing else planned but a couple of at-home movie nights. The phone rings, pulling you from your reverie.

The sun has risen and glints off the resting pools of water in the pile of dirty dishes. The phone rings again and you cram the rest of the chocolate in your mouth, licking your fingers clean. After the third ring, your machine gets it. You listen to your own voice give the out-going message as you walk into the living room to get the cordless.

Your sister's voice, higher pitched than yours and usually so perky, starts with a wet sniff and a watery question, "Sami, are you in?"

Alarmed, you whip the receiver to your ear. "Mel? What is it?"

Sob. Sniff. Staticy breath. "Mom's dead."


	9. iWon't Cry

**You Are Dr. Fred Benson D. Sc.**

How can you face her again after breaking your promise to be at her moon launch? You, of course, watched it on TV with the rest of the world, but you should have been there. You know you should have—you don't like being a man who breaks promises to friends, even if you _were_ in the middle of a scientific break through . . . well, what turned out to be an _almost_ scientific break through. That's what you're ashamed about, you won't even be able to show her a Nobel Prize and say, "See, I would have been there but this came up." Instead, you have nothing.

You leave her the occasional message—keeping them brief in your current spineless state of existence. You see her on Oprah, talking about the old show and her friendship with one of the decade's hottest new stars. You know you should be there with her, too, in the audience, but that week you are swamped with reports that are due to be handed over to the head of department—you watch the show with one eye in a microscope. You try to call her, but she is out.

You could be making a harder effort to contact her, but you let small excuses get in the way. She has a BBQ and you must reject the invitation through the grapevine in which your were invited, due to an incredible series of breakthroughs. Now you can't even dial her number--you barely even eat, you shower only to keep yourself awake for a few more hours, so sure that is all it will take to crack it.

Everything, even your cowardice when it comes to her, is put on hold by these discoveries. Your lab partners agree; at this rate you will have the cure for cancer in time for the Nobel Prize after all. Then, an old friend calls you to tell you that you are invited to a funeral.

She wasn't your mom, but you've known her for several years, and the thought of what her death would do to one of the daughters she left behind makes you drop everything. Your lab partners are competent and more than willing to take over the research until you get back. You put on your black suit and board a plane. Your heart is breaking for her—you can't imagine losing your own mom, no matter how much you might want to some times.

The first person you see when you arrive at the funeral home in Seattle is your first love. She is red and puffy in the eyes, but seems to have taken charge of everything in order to help your mutual friends through this horrible day. It was a car crash, they tell you, she was driving, her boyfriend survived. This man is found crying beside the twins. They don't seem to notice him as they sit, holding each other's hands. One twin is sobbing out of control, her husband seems to be helping keep things running smoothly, the other twin is as silent as the space in which she likes to fly. She is staring at the closed coffin, her eyes glazed over and her mouth a tight, straight line.

You stop in front of them, feel the tears sting at the back of your eyes as you take in the sounds of Melanie's grief and the sight of Sam's. "I'm—" You start and your voice actually cracks. Suddenly you remember a random night, nearly fifteen years previous, when the woman in that coffin spontaneously decided to paint her bathroom purple and coerced you all into helping her, but she didn't care about perfection, you all pretty much just spattered it on the walls. It had been the most fun you ever spent on a Sunday before in your life. "I'm so sorry." You manage to choke out.

Your words bring her out of her own head. She looks up at you for a moment, stands and stares at you. You take her elbows, "Sam, I can't imagine--" You start, but she pulls out of your hold. "I'm fine." She says and sits back down to console her sister.

For lack of knowing what else to do, you walk into the dining room, where food is being served on long tables draped with paper cloths. A small child in a black, polka-dotted dress and tap-dance shoes runs under your feet, and you twist to avoid plowing over her. The girl giggles and runs away. Her father hurries after her, hissing through his beard that play time is _later_, now is the time to be respectful.

"What can I do to help?" you ask your busy brunette friend as she tears the plastic wrap from a dish of food. She looks up at you and stops you from touching any of the unwrapped dishes. "No!" She says, smacking your hand. "Go back in there and take care of Sam!"

"What?" You ask, massaging your stinging skin. "Why me? You know more about that stuff!"

The door bursts open and the polka-dotted little girl comes running back in, her tap shoes clicking loudly over the tiled floor. She runs around her aunt first, who can only stretch and twist to keep the food on the platter she is holding, and then around you and back out the door. When you look back at the aunt, she merely snaps her fingers and points after her niece, silently demanding you go back into the parlor. You go, forlorn.

You sit next to your estranged friend; she ignores you and holds her sobbing sister in silence. After five or six awkward minutes, Mel's husband comes from the dining room, you suspect, under strict orders from the boss to take Mel to someplace quiet, away from Sam. After her charge is taken from her, she sits for only a second longer beside you before springing up and going outside.

You follow in determination, knocking into one of her inked cousins, who she had once made tattoo you against your will when you lost a bet, neglecting to mention it was temporary ink. You say hello but do not slow down. The sun is very bright on the pavement after the respectfully dimmed lights. You squint as you circle the building to the neatly trimmed yard on the side. She is sitting on the picnic table, her feet on the bench, her elbows holding her skirt around her knees.

"Go away." She threatens when you round the corner. You pause in your tracks but do no obey. "Sam."

She looks at you with an expression that says exactly where you can go and what you can do when you got there. Helpless, you do as she wishes, and suffer the wrath of the boss, who is just upset that she can do nothing either. No one knows what to do here, all any of you can do is watch from the sidelines as she goes through the service with an iron mask. The entire scene is made worse by the sight of her identical twin sister, who gives the contrast of her emotions.

In your car, following the two between you and the hearse, your phone rings. You answer automatically when you see that is the lab, then you wish you had left it to voice mail. Another breakthrough and you are needed, you should want to be there for all of this. You tell your partner to keep up the good work, and that no you aren't needed, and no you probably won't be back for another few days. You listen to the arguments for your immediate and speedy return, but they are pebbles against your resolve to see her safely through this dark time. You have a bad feelings about what would happen if you don't. You can let someone down in the small things—if a moon launch can be counted as small—you _can not_ let someone suffer death alone.

...

She's _sitting_ on her great uncle's tombstone. This entire day has been a perfect blend of respectful ceremony and deliberate anarchy to tradition; it has been so _Puckett_. You approach her silently, and when she tells you to eat shit and die, you stand up to her. "I just want to talk to you."

"Now is not the time." She snaps.

"Now is the _best_ time," you say in exasperation.

"_I don't want to hear it_." She says angrily and you swear the muscles in her arms bunch as if she nearly covered her ears like a child. You let off the gas of your attack, come at this in a more gentle tone. "I can imagine everyone's given you the 'I know what you're going through' speech--but they're full of shit. How dare they compare losing a mom at ten or twenty-three, or dad at two? At thirty it's completely different. Am I close?"

She lifts her head. Her eyes are red, but she looks skeptical and angry. "Is that _all_ you came over here to say?" the level of venom in her voice confuses you.

"What else am I supposed to say?" It isn't anger that makes your voice hard, but she seems to take it as such. "I don't need this right now."' She retorts.

"I'm just trying to be here for you." You state.

She snorts. You hold up your hands, refusing to turn this into a fight. "If you don't want me…" you turn and start to walk away, back toward the tent and half buried coffin. The parking lot beyond, beside the church, is half empty. Her twin and the movie star are watching from the perimeter.

She doesn't ask you to stop and to come sit with her for a while. You don't realize you are counting the steps you take away from her until your shiny shoe lands on the white gravel on seventy-seven. You stop next to your friends, who are looking at you like a failure, and you shrug. "She won't talk to me."

You have really began to resent them for pushing this responsibility off on you--why, because the pair of you were in space together for a week, over a year ago? Because, of the four of you, she has seen the least of _you_? None of it makes sense. You even consider returning to the lab after all. You might as well help science if no one wants your help here.

"Stop it." Your brunette says dangerously. You are taken aback. "What?"

"You _do_ this, Freddie! You never _try_ when it comes to Sam! If you don't now, we may all lose her."

"Don't do _that_!" You throw back at her angrily. She steps back, "What did _I_ do?"

"Putting this on me! Since when am _I_ her babysitter?"

Melanie taps your shoulder, you turn and receive a solid punch in the eye that is expertly traveled through and sends you stumbling backwards. For the first time since you met this sister, she actually seems like the one she resembles: bruising you with little-to-no effort.

Collapsed against the car, you hold your face as the twin you have rarely spoken to storms away, her husband in her wake. The movie star sighs, shakes her head and visibly gives up.

"Just forget it." Removing her stilettos, she tiptoes into the graveyard to talk to her friend. Suddenly you see what they were trying to do, and you win a Nobel Prize after all—the Greatest Ass in History.

**AN: I know the title is iWon't Cry as if it is Sam...But I didn't want to go to the dark place to write it from her POV... naturally this was a challenge to write from Freddie's POV. She wanted him there as more than a friend and he was too stupid to realize it...**


	10. iCry

**You are a grieving Sam Puckett**

"How are you feeling?" your movie star friend asks you.

"Sad." You say bitterly. She leans on your great aunt's stone and crosses her arms. After a long pause. "Did you see Mel deck him?" she asks with a laugh. You did. You don't want to laugh but you can't help it. You need to know, "What the hell did he say to her anyway?"

She shakes her head. "I think he was just venting. What was said over here?"

You roll your eyes. "Nothing."

"I saw a lot of strong gesturing. Didn't look like he wanted to leave."

"Yeah, and that's why he volunteered."

"You're probably right…" she says. "That's why he's waiting over there."

You look up in surprise, see that his car is the last one left; the movie star rode here with her brother, who has the mini van idling in the drive close by, waiting for her. Nothing else is spoken. You can either go with her and her brother, or you can hug her goodbye for now and actually talk to the nub.

You hug her and walk to your mother's fresh grave, where a million flowers scent the air. He remains at his car. You talk to the name carved into shiny new stone, you say goodbye for now, and reluctantly approach him.

His eye is black and the sight of it makes you laugh. It isn't a strong enough laugh for sound, but the smile feels good after a day fighting a frown. "You had to be an ass for her to snap like that."

He nods. "A royal one…forgive me?"

You shake your head. "But I'm over it. Can you give me a ride home?"

He tilts his head. "To Houston?"

Wow. You can't believe you just referred to Seattle as home. It hasn't been home since your were seventeen. What made that happen? You already know the answer. All of your friends together, getting along, eating and being there for you; they had made a true front to this tragedy: a home, when this kind of thing could have shattered all you had left.

"I don't know what I'm saying, " you say wearily, covering your face momentarily. "Can you take me to the hotel?"

He nods with that smile that lifts one side of his face. "Hop in."

He leaves you at the hotel and calls you half an hour later when he gets to his mom's place. You talk only for a few minutes; your head has really started to hurt and you just want to go to sleep.

The next morning he calls and invites you to breakfast. You say yes, hang up and get half-way ready before you see the black dress you discarded yesterday and remember your loss. This sets you back a day. How in the world can you forget something like that?

It's his fault. He woke you from a dreamless sleep with a happy voice and casual offer, and you felt like you were just here for another premier. You abandon getting ready, turn out all the lights, and curl up in the hotel bed. You make a cave out of the blankets and pillows. Alone, in the dark, in your cave; you cry.

You don't know what time it is when you hear the door open. The lights don't come on, but the light from the hallway spills into the room and falls on your bed. You don't move the blankets from over your head, but you do try to stifle your sniffs. After a moment, the door closes and you hear soft footsteps over the carpet. "Sam?" He asks softly.

You are aware that it is expected and perfectly understandable for you to fall to pieces, like your sister did, but never in your life have you allowed your outer walls of defense to crumble. You're comfortable behind your wall; you have repaired and fortified it through the hardships of your life, and now if you let it fall you are afraid of what will be revealed. Possibly a pale, sun-deprived quivering mass that would burst like a bubble and cease to exist.

"Sam." He says again, this time it isn't a question, it's barely more than a whisper.

You take your face out of the pillow and try to speak but now that you've let the tears come, you can't reign them in, a whine escapes you and you sniff.

His weight makes the mattress sink and squeak. He pulls the blankets off your head and pushes your hair from your face. "You'll smother if you keep that up." He says. "No one wants that." Your walls crumble. You sit up and throw your arms around him, sobbing just like your sister. He repositions himself until he can lean on the head board and then he pulls your legs over his and wraps his arms around you.

You haven't sat in someone's lap and cried since your were a toddler. The security and safety of it overwhelms you. He says nothing as he holds you in the dark. He strokes your back, rocks, and occasionally wipes a tear of his own away. You cry yourself to sleep with your head on his shoulder and his breath in your hair.

**You Are Carly Shay, the Most Sought After Leading Lady in Hollywood.**

It took you a few more minutes than you would have liked (after all, you are a superb actress, you should be able to convince anyone of anything in a single sentence) but you _finally_ convinced the man at the front desk that he should give you a key for room 1242. You haven't heard from Sam since the funeral and you heard from Fred's mother that she hadn't come to breakfast after saying she would. You are worried. You never saw Sam like she was at the funeral before, so distant from reality, so stricken by grief. You are hoping you'll find her passed out among mounds of junk food, and nothing more.

You don't even knock before entering. You figure if she has a problem with it, a good shouting match about something trivial might be enough to spark some life back into her. You take one step into the room before stopping in your tracks and covering your mouth.

He sits on top of the covers, against the head board, fully clothed in jeans and t-shirt. She is still in pajamas, her hair a mess, and she's in his lap. Both are asleep. Judging by the stains on his shirt and the look of her face, you conclude that she finally had a good cry about it. You're glad she wasn't alone. You are even more glad about who was with her. You try to tiptoe back out of the room, but the door hinges creak as you try to pull it closed. He opens his eyes.

**You Are Dr. Fred Benson D. Sc.**

The brunette tosses you a smug, apologetic smile and shuts the door behind her. The sun has repositioned itself in the sky as you slept. There is light enough in the room now from the windows that you can see clearly the face resting on your collarbone. It is tear-streaked and her hair is sticking to it in places, but it is peaceful and beautiful. Your back is killing you and your legs are asleep from the knees down. You look at the clock. It is well past noon; the two of you have been asleep for almost five hours. Your stomach growls.

It's hard, but you manage to wriggle out from under her and straighten her out on the bed without waking her. You stretch and set to picking up her abandoned things on the floor, just to have something to do, and then you pick up the phone and order more than enough Chinese food. You hang up after telling them where to deliver the order and then you sink into a chair and watch her sleep.


	11. iPull Strings

**You Are Sam Puckett.**

The smell of B. F. Wang's wakes you from your comatose sleep. The hotel room is bright with sunlight. A softly playing TV underlines the sounds of someone rooting through plastic bags. You take your precious time to fully wake, and by that time you have remembered what put you to sleep, and who had sat with you. You roll over stiffly, and squint at the table situated under the bright window.

"Hi sleepy." He says, stepping into your line of sight as he opens the plastic-wrapped sporks. "Hungry?"

You nod but don't move. He opens a carton and stirs the hot noodles around, trying to tempt you to get up. When you don't move he comes to you, sits in the very same spot where he rocked you to sleep. You've felt lost many times in your life, just like last night, but it was the first time someone made you feel safe at the same time.

"What are you still doing here?" you ask through a dry throat. He takes a massive bite of the food and smiles as he puckers his lips around the noodles, not answering. You elaborate as you find strength to push yourself upright in the bed and steal the food. "Don't you have a lab to be running in some university basement?"

"Got it covered." He says, getting up to get his own food. He doesn't return to the spot next to you, but sits at the table. "I am under strict orders to be whatever you need me to be." He says.

"Carly's orders?"

"And Mel's," he says, subconsciously brushing at his black eye with the back of a finger. You smirk. Seeing him go down has been the highlight of your week. His presence makes sense to you. Your best girl friend can't be here for you, because unlike him, she can't get someone to do her work for her. She _would_ order someone to be your lifeboat; you have a feeling that if he couldn't, then she would have recruited her brother.

You are happy she needn't take that stretch.

There isn't much on the three basic channels of the hotel cable, so once you are finished eating, you take a shower and get dressed for a day out on the town. He has cleaned the entire room while you were in the bathroom. The bed is even made. You roll your eyes and ask, "So what's next on the Sam's Lifeboat Schedule?"

He shoves his hands into his pockets. "You're running the show."

"Great, I'm going back to bed."

"I don't think so. You are allowed to pick any _active_ activity, and I am allowed to _not allow _any down time."

"I don't know!" You groan. "I don't feel like doing anything." You sound angry, but it's that or have a wavering voice, which isn't an option. He takes it with a grain of salt, however, and shrugs. "Got a wetsuit?"

The beach is crowded with tourists but you claim a spot and plant your board in the pebbly sand under your feet. The waves are breaking beautifully. Other surfers are already taking advantage of them. You are both wearing matching suits because the store only had the one blue and white pattern. The boards are rented and yours is hot pink, his is white and longer.

"This should be interesting." He says. "I mean I haven't surfed since about the eleventh grade."

You laugh. "You're idea, Benson."

"Yeah, because the Sam I know can't pass over the chance to drown me and make it look like an accident."

"Can Lifeboats be suicidal?" You ask, a finger on your chin philosophically.

"I must be." He says, mostly to himself, and you wonder exactly what he meant by that but let it pass in order to move on to a happier subject. "I bet I can do this without falling once."

"Fifty bucks?"

You shrug. Hey, you've got that kind of money now. He laughs. "Oh it is on!"

You haven't done a whole lot of surfing in Houston. Your first attempt to get back on the board after an eight year hiatus looses you fifty bucks and gets water up your nose. Your second attempt is better, you actually get a feel for it, but when you try to maneuver the board up and down the wave like you once could, you wipeout.

He is straddling his board, laughing, when you resurface. You narrow your eyes. "Let's see you do any better."

He shrugs, and for a second you think he is actually going to wow you. Then he tanks it hard and comes up sputtering and gasping for air. You laugh so hard you can' sit up straight on your board. The next wave you both try together and you only wipe out when he crashes into you.

"You okay?" He comes up asking. You shake the water out of your eyes and ears, laughing. "Fine, you?"

He dog peddles in one place, his board floating at the end of its tether. "I think I pulled something on that one."

"Can you swim?" You ask, rolling onto your board and paddling over to him.

"I'll be fine." He says, rolling onto his board and sitting up. "Catch this next one, it'll be sweet!"

**You are Dr. Fred Benson, D. Sc.**

Your shoulder twinges but you ignore it as you hold tight to your board and dive under the wave that she rides. Once out the other side, you look back in time to see her do the first trick of the day, successfully staying on the board. She paddles back to you.

"That was amazing!" You tell her. She pinches her nose and wipes it. "Why didn't you catch it?"

"My shoulder." You admit. What a man, two waves, one head-on collision and you're already hurt. She asks questions until you assure her that it is just a pulled muscle. "Well, do you want call it a day?" she asks.

"No way, no." You say. "Surf, you're just picking it up again."

She shrugs and goes back to having her fun. You become the surf championship's only judge, judging the sole contestant Sam Puckett, who never makes a lower score with each new wave until she--under your scoring system anyway--is riding perfect tens every time.

One of the hard core surfers from a pack who evidently followed the waves this far up the coast, paddles to your side after she has pulled off a move that she has never done before. You are cheering so loud your voice will be hoarse tomorrow and you clap despite your shoulder.

"Dude," the blonde haired man says, "I've been, like, watching you since you guys came out, and I thought, you know, here's a couple of newbies, you know? Is this her first time surfing? because, like, whoa…"

You smile and shake your head. "No, we learned as kids, but she hasn't surfed in years, she's just…." You shrug happily as you watch her glide to a stop and sit down rather than wipeout. The wave has carried her a good distance from you; she waits for the next one to ride it back over here.

"No way? Cool, man, cool." The beach boy says, cutting himself off with, "Ah, look it, dude! She's a natural, man!" He says, laughing and cheering with you as she pulls another trick. Inspired to get back out there, your visitor goes to his stomach on his board and says casually between his excited shouts, "Tell your girl she's the man, bro! 'Kay?"

The idea that you and her could be mistaken as a couple makes you smile and shake your head, but for some reason you don't feel the need to correct him. "I will, man."

"Right on." he says, paddling out to meet the next one. She glides to a stop next to you.

"Making friends?" She asks. You are still smiling like a goof and try to stop incase she figures out what you just pretended about. "Yeah, he's a cool guy."

It starts to rain. The tourists flee. You and she virtually have the place to yourself, save for the small pack of real surfers. She is surfed out and floats on her board next to you, the pair of you bobbing up and down in the waves like a couple of corks as you watch the professionals do their thing.

**You are Sam Puckett**

Sitting across from him in a Subways dining room that evening, the pair of you talk about all of the great things about your mother that you can remember. You are laughing and crying. After the late dinner, you get some ice cream and sit on a bench in the park to enjoy it.

"Thanks." You say to him, crumbling your paper cup around the wooden stick and tossing it into the bin at the end of the seat. It has turned chilly and you cross your bare arms, leaning just a tad bit closer to his warmth.

"No problem." He says between licks on his vanilla cone.

"No I mean for the whole day, and this morning…"

He smiles and turns the cone to work on evening the shape. "I know." He says. You yawn. "I almost don't want to go back to Houston."

"Do you have to?" he asks. You shrug. "Might as well get back to it all. And I can't afford too much of a vacation. We're talking mission assignments, and I need to catch up on some studying."

"Studying?"

"Yeah, I have to, to keep up with those dorks," you say, allowing resentment to color your tone, "and they all want my seat so I can't slack off or I'll be passed over in the next flight."

He shakes his head. "Man, being an astronaut sounds like so much fun."

You snort. He would be attracted to the idea of constant study. On this thread, the pair of you recount your first spaceflight, what it felt like, how it effected you. Then you tell him about your moon walk and he apologies for missing it.

"I just wish we could work together again, you know? That was the best." he says.

"So come up with more experiments to do in orbit."

"I didn't come up with that, I won a spot on a prestigious team that had been planning it for five years. Besides…" he trails off and you have to prompt him to finish his thought. He shrugs. "I don't know…being a scientist is sort of...lonely, you know? I mean I run a lab full of other people, but we aren't really friends, we're just colleges and we work in silence or something. Not that what we're doing isn't important."

You bite back a retort about how important it could be, because now isn't the time. You've got a dork admitting he has no friends, and you've seen a path that will solve both of your problems.

"So quit. Do something else." You suggest. He laughs. "Yeah, because that's easy. I have all these degrees but they won't get me anywhere outside of a lab."

"So go to a bigger lab." You say. "I can probably get you a spot in mission control or something, if you want to work with computers again."

In his surprise, his lick is too hard and the scoop of ice cream falls off the cone. You look mournfully at the snack oozing on the dirty pavement of the walk. "Oooh, what a waste..." You sympathize. He doesn't give a flip about the ice-cream.

"Sam? Can you really do that?" he asks, his voice cracking an octave. You snort. "I can try. Jack can even vouch for you."

"Why would he?"

You shrug, because for some reason, you can't tell him that you can get that man to do anything for you if you bat your eyes. "You impressed him with your vigilance up there. Just let me do what I can, spring you from that student lab to a real one."

He can't stop thanking you until you are at your hotel door and you say good night. You close the door, lock it, and collapse on your bed, exhausted by your hours in the water. You are asleep in under a minute.

....

Back in your life, Jack asks how the funeral went and your mind slides over the foggy ceremony and presents crystal-clear memories of the day after, starring your Lifeboat, and you answer with a happy smile, "Great."

Disturbed, the colonel pauses in his work and looks you up an down. "It was your mother's funeral, wasn't it?"

Realizing how inappropriate your tone was, you cringe and mentally kick yourself for thinking like that. You clear all confusion by explaining that some therapeutic surfing had helped you put it all at peace, which is the truth, even if you let is sound like you surfed alone.

Then you get down to business. Just like you thought, Jack hears your request, shrugs and says yeah sure, he'll back the doctor. The two of you go to the head-macho's office.

**You are Dr. Fred Benson D. Sc.**

Okay. So you have been offered a job in NASA. You can take it, apply what your doctorate in technology has taught you and create new equipment to make an astronaut's life easier in space, or you can cure cancer.

In one job, you will make history with a group of men you don't even like. In the other, you will spend every day with a real friend. In the first, you will have a depressing life. In the second, you will have her smiles and jokes on a regular basis.

Maybe you aren't doing a proper pros and cons lists, but you sleep on it and wake up ready to accept the job at NASA.

**AN: the surfing thing is based entirely on Spencer having once said he would surf because his meatball told him to; I didn't know you can surf in Seattle...*facepalm* I left it vague incase they were supposed to travel to a decent beach. lol.**


	12. iFace It

**You are Lieutenant Sam Puckett**

What with having your best friend working in the same corporation, your life becomes a little brighter, when you didn't even know it was beginning to dim. As the months turn into years, you are invited to more movie premiers, become the god mother of a red headed baby named Samantha, who was born with teeth ("How fitting," the father had said.) As part of NASA's goal of establishing a permanent human base on the moon, you and the colonel fly more missions to the lunar surface, in which you haul parts up like a freight train, complete with a team of techs who can put it together.

After you have gone to the moon three more times (becoming the second half of the most experienced pilot-team in the current NASA program) you have helped build a runway for commercial shuttles to land, since the uneven surface of the moon was the only thing resorting NASA back to using rockets and lunar-landing modules, which were damned hard to learn to fly.

You love the shuttle, it is like coming home to sit in the cockpit again behind some two thousand switches and gauges. After the runway, you haul up parts to build a small station that can support life for one week; it will eventually be expanded to a much larger facility that can support life indefinitely, but NASA isn't quiet there yet. Over the course of these exciting years, a new trio has formed in your base home of Houston, Texas.

You and Jack's casual, unofficial dates had quickly morphed to include a third wheel, and now serve as the daily ritual where all three of you unwind after a long day of hard work. The two men have become close, even saying aloud that they are brothers. You believe that; he looks up to the famous astronaut, and his type is the sort the colonel loves to hate. They are big brother and little brother, right down to the half nelsons and advice on dating.

When the colonel successfully teaches the nub to pick up a waitress, you give in to the persistent invitations to grab a beer with the newest rookie, who is part of your next mission. The colonel advises against you using the kid, "It'll cause issues that may interfere with the mission later."

Not for the first time, you let Jack know just how mean you can be when provoked. You tell him to mind his own damn business, you can date whoever you want to date, you aren't _using_ anyone. He leaves you alone after that, and doesn't help the doctor score anymore chicks, though he doesn't seem to need any more help.

A pattern emerges. Whenever the nub meets someone knew, you have a beer with another rookie, but spend so much time talking about pork chops that no special mood can fall on the evening; just a little trick you learned early on to keep them from coming back for more.

Due to simple rotations and fairness, your number of days in space are limited. The colonel hits his limit before you, since he has flown in space a handful of times more than you. He is grounded, but with his tremendous experience in space-flight, he is given Flight Control, the head macho on all of your next flights. The tech doctor also gets a promotion when the colonel names him Cap-Com on your last flight.

Ever since you walked on the moon, there has been an influx of women joining the astronaut core, and now you are making history one more time as the senior pilot on the first all-female crew flying to the moon. It makes you feel good about your last flight. You were afraid it would be so routine that it would have been over and done with before anyone cared, before you can take in the stars one last time.

It is a routine mission; you are simply taking supplies up to the moon base like you have done every three months since it was able to sustain life. The girls of your crew are great fun, all of them once tomboys like you "now determinedly carving out a niche for themselves in a man's world, all the while managing to look fabulous," as one reporter says at the press conference the day before launch.

The room laughs and a small spatter of applause verifies this comment. You and the other girls shake your heads humbly and laugh, but your eyes catch his lopsided smile as he claps loudest, his eyes on you. You lean forward to speak into the microphone, thanking the reporter for the compliment and asking everyone to look past it and take you all as serious scientists.

Yeah. You just asked the world to take you as a serious scientist.

You are in a surreal state throughout the rest of the conference. Since when did you care how people saw you? Since when did you want to be considered part of the NASA team, and not just a monkey-trained pilot with a pretty face? _Since people started calling you pretty_, a small voice says. When you were the only woman, they over looked you, they knew better than to single you out for being a woman. Now with no men, they are taking notice of how feminine you actually are, and that makes you uncomfortable. You never have liked it when people carry on about your genetic gifts—that was always your sister's topic of choice.

When the conference is over, you get to bed early and wake before your alarm. You can't help experiencing everything with melancholy as you go through flight-prep for the last time, and board the rocket for the last time. You're mind keeps bringing up your first flight, the excitement, the anticipation, the altercation in the program when _he_ had appeared to share it with you. You sort of wish he was there to share this with you, and the colonel too; you want your last flight to be as fun as your first.

"We're all go for launch, Aries." tower says.

"Roger that." You say. The count down. The roar, the shake, the blast. The momentum. You are among the stars for the last time. Tears prick the back of your eyelids but you hold it together. Then Cap-Com's voice crackles to life in your ear. The standard relays, all is in working order, they need conformation. Then the voice, to you always just another part of the computer, is suddenly not just a voice as you put a face with it. _His_ face. His voice, asking you, "How are those stars, Aries?"

You look out of your tiny windshield at the naked stars and free, wide-open space that you know and love so well, and you realize that he is experiencing this with you, in a small way at least.

**You are Cap-Com Houston**

In such a routine flight, with such an experienced pilot, there seems to be more time--between relaying Flight-Commander's standard comments, questions, and answers—for you to chit-chat over the com-link. This is your first time as Cap-Com, so you want to be one hundred percent professional, but you also know that this is her last flight, and you wish to God you could have been up there with her, especially after you see the look on her face as gravity drops away.

You can see the tender expression thanks to the camera docked to the "dashboard" of the rocket. It is there to forge a stronger sense of connection between mission control and the flight; you can see them on the screen like movie-stars, and they can see all one hundred of you, like a little aunt farm on a tiny screen amongst their gauges; mission control has no one face, just the one voice.

"How are those stars, Aries?" you can't help but ask her watering eyes on the big screen. The members of flight deck glance from their monitors at you, and you roll your lips as you glance back at the flight commander, who's expression is a little too understanding for your comfort. He doesn't reprimand you for the premature chit-chat, but allows your question to stand as the request for status update, which she knows to give next.

The mission runs as smoothly as any of the ones you have worked in mission control while the colonel has been in command. She is less talkative over the link as she has become since her partner was permanently grounded. You know she is trying to savor every last moment in space.

The mission is half over. Aries has reached the moon, everyone else gets to go down to the surface, she remains alone in the ship, keeping it in orbit, reminding you all that she is first and foremost a pilot—all of that moon walk stuff was a publicity stunt. Give her a ship to operate and she is happy.

As all astronauts say, it is the first and last fifty miles of any flight that need to be worried about, everything else is almost too easy. Without her entertaining antics between the technical stuff, you actually feel yourself becoming bored, and wishing more than ever that you were up there with her. You can't tell her this. Not with everyone listening, not when you haven't the slightest idea of how it will be taken.

If you hadn't been on her first flight, you wouldn't have seen it. You wouldn't know today that she has a heart, because ever after that she has kept it as well hidden as when you were kids—until now, her last flight, you can see it again.

Man are you an idiot.

You let yourself believe that she never changed, and that whatever softness you witnessed on the space station had been a dream, a fluke. Boy, did you screwed this up. Like always. You can blame it on not having a father figure all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that the only thing keeping you from what may be all you've ever wanted, is your cowardice.

The second she started to harden her shell you started to blind yourself. Better that, than face the truth and have the shit kicked out of you by love. As kids, you feared her because she could beat you up; it was only natural you should fear her as an adult when she could break you into a lot more pieces than the movie-star did.

So you let her down, you sabotaged your chance with her, you protected yourself from experiencing uncharted territory. You were the teen-aged girl, dumping before you can be dumped, before anything actually happened.

Watching her float on the big screen as she silently contemplates the universe outside of her window, you take your first real step in life. Not like her, who has been hopping, skipping, and jumping through life's obstacles as easily as the ones at her old academy, you finally get it in gear, and go off the road of least resistance. You make the decision to love her.


	13. iLose Control

**You are Senior Pilot Sam Puckett**

Left to yourself for the next few hours while your crew unloads their cargo down at the "astronaut hotel" you keep the ship in orbit and think about your life. You have been so much more than you ever planned that at this point, you have stopped measuring it by your high-school self, and started looking at it as the norm. This greatness is what anyone can do, they just have to want to do it.

Now your ride in the heavens is ending. You can feel this chapter of your life closing and you wonder, what can top _this_? You have done everything; the rebel life, the valedictorian life, the soldier life, now the astronaut thing is over. The only thing left to do is the traditional stuff. Marriage. Kids. A family.

Your sister has three kids. Your movie-star friend has married a co-star twice. You are thirty-three years old, your biological clock is in the red, and you have nothing but a school-girl crush.

You blush inwardly when he looks at you, you think about him all of the time, and when he dates you get angry, but you can't let him know how you feel. This crush can't see the light of day or it will be ruined. You let yourself be meaner than ever rather than let him sense any softness.

You don't take into account that this very crush has survived death once before, when time wore it away, and it returned twice as strong. You don't even remember that earlier crush, it's part of that childhood you stopped measuring things by--all you remember is an old friendship, just like the one he has given you since you re-met. It's a painful friendship, one that tells you he doesn't want anything more than your camaraderie.

You have one other prospect: your old partner. You don't want him. You know you should, you feel like an idiot for not wanting your only realistic chance at marriage, but like a school-girl, you can't look beyond a certain lopsided smile and annoying cowlick. You want to hold out for that one-in-a-million chance that he will see through your guise and love what he sees. The odds may seem too great for someone with lesser luck in life, but out of a million people in your hometown, _you_ touched the stars.

You have looked at life, seen something you wanted and gone for it, achieved it. The only difference now? You are too scared to take the step. Nothing can abate this fear. To take the step would be to lower your shell. Your outer walls make you who you are, without them you can't stand up. You tell yourself life isn't fair and no one gets everything they want.

You haven't slept through the night in weeks. A month ago, you bought some sleeping pills over the counter, but you haven't taken one yet. Rockets are possibly the pentacle of such heavy machinery as not to be operated while on them. Fortunately, the idea of having some on the nightstand had let your sleep a little more soundly than recent, so you were fresh and ready for the launch. Up here you aren't expected to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time, so it isn't a problem, but once you are home, and there are no more rockets with your name on them, you have no qualms about taking a little pill, if needed, in order to catch a standard seven-and-a-half hour night's sleep between working days.

You pray it won't come to that. Perhaps when you land, a new opportunity will present itself, and then marriage won't have to be your next step. Maybe you can enter politics, maybe you can become a firefighter, or star in a comedy with the movie-star. You have plenty of options. Distractions. You are convinced that you can get yourself to sleep without those pills. Yes, they will be like your uncle's bottle of Scotch in his bookshelf: security, to be felt not used.

On the tiny screen between your gauges, you can see the mission control room; ten rising rows of computer consoles in front of the NASA crest. About a hundred figures wearing headsets, moving along the aisles with coffee and papers. At this point in the mission, most are absent from their seat, getting a walk, a nap, or an early lunch. Thinking about this, you get hungry and find a freeze-dried ice-cream sandwich, which you stick in the microwave. The miracle of science, when the oven dings, you pull out a cold bar of ice-cream.

It tastes like shit—others have said it tastes like any other ice cream sandwich, but it doesn't to you, because you have always been able to taste the subtle differences between brands of all foods—but you eat it anyway for something to do. It doesn't, however, distract you from your train of thought, which has done yet another fantastic loop-the-loop and landed right back on the heart of your problem. Your crush.

"Ah, kill me," you beg, forgetting that you have the link on, so that Houston hears the plea.

"You should have processed your request for more meat sustenance." He says with a smile in his voice, evidently taking your comment to be about the snack in your hand. Gripping embarrassment prevents you from replying to this. With a noncommittal noise, you capitalize on his assumption and pretend like you can't stomach the ice-cream.

BANG.

The earpiece squeals in your ear, the lights and instruments flash, and the entire ship rolls around you, bringing a lever against your head with enough force to knock you spinning into the opposite wall.

**You are Cap-Com Houston**

"SAM!" You yell, lifting yourself out of your chair by your console. The image on the screen above your head is spinning out of control, you can't make heads or tails of anything on board the ship.

One word gets through her crackling link. Your name.

Flight deck is frantic around you, flipping switches and reading monitors, and giving their reports on top of each other. The image stops rolling, you can see Sam, bracing herself against something solid as she works to check the systems, shaking her head, trying to see straight. Behind you, Jack is on the ball, making orders and calling shots. Less than a minute after the bang, it is determined that she was struck by a small meteor.

You can do nothing but run protocol here as you speak for all of mission control while they double and triple check systems and secure the crippled ship. She has pulled together fast and nicely. She works as one who has done this uncountable times in a simulator, yet knows too well that the stars outside her window aren't fake this time.

After the worst ten minutes of your life, you learn with the rest of them that the life support systems are fine—for now. She is losing oxygen in a slow leak. The bigger problem is her engine. It wouldn't be a problem if she was in the moon's pull, she could do a controlled crash with her thrusters then, but no. The collision knocked her free of all moon's gravity. She's a sitting duck; floating between the earth and the moon and nothing can be done about it fast enough. She will run out of oxygen before a rescue shuttle can reach her.


	14. iNeed to Say This Now

**You are Flight Commander Jack Shaw**

You won't give up easily. You can feel the minions of mission control reluctantly getting on board with every one of your new plans to get her safely home. You are getting severely pissed off. The only man here pulling his weight, doing his job, is Cap-Com. If he wasn't you would have had a skull to crack. But he is, and that's how you know that everything will be okay. Because _when_ she comes home, you know that she will have her heart set on a deserving man, and _when_ he sees her again he will finally let her know that she isn't alone. This you know because he isn't hiding under that rock anymore. All of his emotions are on his sleeve for the rest of the world to see, and you can't afford to show doubt now. If he sees it he'll crack and you need him together on this if you want a chance to save her.

**You are Fred Benson**

God works is mysterious and marvelous ways. You've been told this your whole life but only this minute do you believe it as you practically bounce in place. You always loved technology not just because you were a loser and had no better way to spend your time, but because of this. You went to college and got a doctorate in the subject not just because you were young and still afraid to branch into other fields, but for this. You won that place on the space mission not just because you worked hard to get, but because it was the door that led you to this job. Even though the entire mission control room is buzzing with scientists running around, trying to think of what to do, even as she frantically follows their orders and argues her own ideas, you are bouncing in place, waving your arms like a maniac.

You have realized a way to save her.

"Sam!" You cry and she stops mid sentence, freezes as she reaches to flip a switch someone told her to flip. The whole room looks at you. You look only at her on the screen. You lean forward over your console and tell her your idea. She is hesitant to do it at first, the chances of it working are too slim, but you convince her. You have to walk her through the steps, only two or three of the other tech guys can even understand what angle you're getting at as you tell her to shut down certain systems, but leave others alone. "Now you have enough to burn your thrusters." You tell her.

"But the moon is too far away!" She says.

"Your not headed for the moon, you're headed for Earth."

"It's even further away—are you kidding?" She asks. You spread your palms flat on the top of your console. "It should get you near the space station's orbit." You say.

"Near isn't good enough, Benson." Jack barks at you, but you ignore him. "The Russians have their SPEAR on board, sir." You tell him.

Solar Powered Electric Astro Rocket. It is basically a George Jetson car, a tiny little single person space vehicle used to make repairs on the outer part of the station. It is capable of going several hundred feet from the station and back when fully charged. They always have it fully charged. The whole room catches on to your idea, finally. You are still only looking at the screen. "They can zip out and catch your with their robotic arm, but if you don't go now, and I mean, _now_, by the time you get there, the Space Station will have already passed your position in orbit and it'll be a whole day before they come back around. You're oxygen won't last that long. It'll--" Your voice cracks as you relate that horrible possibility.

There is a horrendously long one- second pause before Jack makes your idea a direct order. You know the possibilities are slim—too slim for NASA's comfort, but in the single moment you had the idea, the universe and all of its complexities had seemed to align, and life made sense, if even for a moment. That is enough to convince you that she will not die today. She _can not_ die. It will all work out. It _has _to work out.

**You Are Sam Puckett**

His genius was always what you loved about him, and if that wasn't true, it would definitely be what you loved about him from now on. You do as he tells you, you pray to God, and then you ignite your thrusters. It is a long burn and you keep your eyes locked on planet earth through the entire thing. The way it is growing bigger in your windshield is both comforting and frightening; what if you don't make it?

You beat those thoughts away just as his voice in your ear begins counting down to when you should run out of fuel. You're engines quit the moment he is supposed to say one, but he doesn't—kind of like in the old days for the web show—but you only briefly think of that, and then it is back to the same eerie silence that comes from floating in a dead space ship in outer space.

You hear him sigh in your ear and you can almost hear the smile in his voice when he says, "Good job, Sam, now look out your port side window. Is the space Station there?"

You are smiling, too, as you spin around to look out the appropriate window. Your smile drops and your heart acts like there is gravity in your capsule.

"It's not there."

**You Are Fred Benson**

"What do you mean it's not there?" Jack asks. She gets the camera and points it out the window herself. The screen fills up with the blue and white curve of the earth's surface, and the inky blackness of space. Empty space.

"Where is it, Freddie?" She asks. You are staring in horror. Your previous certainty, your previous hopes, are suddenly as dead as her ship. You did the math wrong. She has missed the station. She is still outside of Earth gravity. She is running out of oxygen. By the time the space station comes back around, she will be dead. You were wrong. She missed it. No oxygen.

"Houston, I repeat, where is my space station?" Her voice is high pitched and her breathing is catchy. She knows what you know.

Mission control is silent. Jack's head is bowed, his eyes are closed. Several people have their hands clasps over their mouths or appear to be praying. No one is looking at you or her.

"HOUSTON WHERE IS MY THE GODDAMN STATION?" She shouts.

Jack clears his throat. "Every one take off your head sets." He says. He speaks softly, but the room is so silent, everyone hears him. Your eyes sting and suddenly brim with tears. Is this goodbye?

No one moves a muscle. Jack lifts his head and looks around. "HEADSETS OFF—NOW!"

Everyone obeys. Expect you, but then, he wasn't talking to you. Everyone obeys and while the sounds of a hundred headsets being taken off fills the silence, your friend turns to you with puffy eyes. "You have the airwaves all to yourself, Freddie." He says. His voice is strained. "Say what you need to say."

You can't breathe. This _is_ goodbye.

**You Are Going To Be The First American to Die in Outer Space**

The silence that follows your question is heavy, meaning only one thing. You're dead. You can't even look and see what everyone in mission control is doing, because you had to cut the power from that monitor for the thrust. All you have is your radio and nothing else. No lights. No heat. Less and Less oxygen every minute, only enough left for an hour at the most.

"Sam." His voice is a crack. If you weren't floating, you would sink right now. Tears fill your eyes. You turn to look at the earth—the closest thing you have to his face, which, in all of it's radiant beauty, is no where near as good. Your fingers are shaking as you dash a tear out of your vision. It never falls, it just floats away. You remember that he can still see you, and you turn and look at the lens of the camera.

"You tried." You tell it. "It was a really good idea—" You voice catches. You swallow it and put on the face you wore at your mother's funeral. "It was the only chance, and—and I thank you for the hope it gave me, even if it didn't last—"

"Sam, I have to tell you something." His tone of voice says it all.

"No!" You interrupt.

"You don't even know what I'm going to say." He replies, almost angry, but not quite.

"I don't want it to be like this." You say. You never knew the sky was a solid thing, until now, when it is what separates you from him.

"It's our only chance." He croaks. You close your eyes against more tears and shake your head. Maybe, maybe through sheer will power you can survive long enough to get home and tell him face-to-face how you feel. You can't breathe. You find yourself wishing the meteor had been bigger, had whipped you out before you had time to think about it.

"Freddie, I'm scared." You whisper.

His sob fills the airwaves. "Don't be." He says with a sniff. He clears his throat and his voice is stronger. "Please don't be, baby. It's okay. I'm with you."

**You Are A Man Who's Heart is Slowly Ripping Itself to Shreds**

You are standing where Flight Control normally stands, in the middle of the room, with a dead center view of the screen. You see her crying. You hear her sniffing across too many miles. You would trade anything—everything, to be up there dying with her, rather than down here living without her. She is now sobbing.

"Sam." You say. "Tell me what you see—describe the stars to me, Sam." There is a long pause and she dashes away a few tears and looks passed the camera, out the window behind it. "The stars are beautiful, Freddie." She says. "They're bright and everywhere, and—and—" Her voice hitches and she pauses, her breath catches.

"What?" You ask---you think wildly of the oxygen--has it been an hour already?--but then, and this is the amazing part, she suddenly smiles. It is a beautiful, glowing smile.

"Freddie!" She gasps and she covers her mouth.

"What?" You practically shout. She is sobbing now. "What?"

She grabs the camera. The world on the screen shakes and whirls and then becomes still. "We were just early!" She shouts.

Mission control—who had been sitting quietly, pretending they didn't exist--jumps to its feet as one entity and screams in surprise and joy. The space station—Sam's ride to safety and to you, is zooming around the curvature of the earth, miles further out in orbit that you thought, which accounts to why it was late; a bigger orbit takes longer. You—and the rest of NASA, including the people _on_ the station, apparently, thought they were on a much smaller orbit.

"Houston, I'M COMING HOME!" She screams. You fall to your knees.


	15. iLove You

**You are alive and back on Earth**

The sun is shining innocently and NASA's near-catastrophe is all over the news. The first all women flight to the moon was nearly a tragedy, but for the fast thinking and bravery of the solo pilot who was knocked out of her lunar orbit by a meteor. At least, that's what the televisions and radios are saying about it. They are over-looking the real savior of the day, and of your life, the man you are looking for as you step out of the van in front of the recovery station. All of NASA is waiting to see you alive, the furthermost figure, Fred Benson, who breaks into a run the second your foot hits the pavement.

You are trying to move as quickly as he, but you are weakened by your stint in below-zero temperatures, low oxygen levels, and a severe knock to the head that is more noticeable now that you are called to walk. You get yourself to your feet, but he has his arms around you before you loose your balance.

"Oh, Sam!" He gasps. His face is in your neck, against your ear, your face. Your knees buckle. You aren't sure if it is fatigue. When you collapse into him, his tight hold on you tightens. You put weak arms around his neck, realizing that he has lifted you and that you are moving. You meet his eyes for the first time, you think, in your life, for surely you have never seen these eyes.

They are looking at you, _you_ not the person you present to the world, and they hold a tide of crashing emotions. He brushes loose hair out of your eyes and you don't even know if he said it out loud, but somehow you have heard him say, "I love you."

You kiss him and your voice cracks as you return the sentiment. There is one good reason why you are here today; the following year, you have married your reason.

**AN: Short. We know. We're sorry to leave you hanging like that, but there is no other way to end this! It could keep going on and on forever! lol Hope you enjoyed it! If you didn't leave reviews for individual chapters, understandable, but please-PLEASE leave a review for the whole thing!**


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